Joe Vanden Acker is the link between Lawrence University athletics and the media.
Vanden Acker’s duties include coordinating media coverage for Lawrence’s 22 varsity teams, producing athletics publications, serving as head statistician for home events, maintaining the athletic portion of the Lawrence website and distributing results to local, state and national media. Vanden Acker also produces video webcasts for 12 Lawrence teams and serves as the "Voice of the Vikings" for hockey, baseball and softball.
Vanden Acker joined the Lawrence staff at the dawn of the digital statistics era and in the infancy of the university's athletic website. Over the ensuing 20-plus years, Vanden Acker embraced the new technologies, and the website has grown exponentially during his tenure overseeing the sports information office. As Lawrence's de facto athletic historian, Vanden Acker also expanded the university's athletic records in multiple areas. The largest project saw a dramatic expansion of Lawrence's football records as Vanden Acker scoured nearly a century's worth of football box scores and newspaper clippings.
Vanden Acker also served as the host media relations director for the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship for 19 years from 2000-18 when the event was played at Fox Cities Stadium just outside of Appleton. He also served on the local organizing committee for the NCAA Division III Baseball Championship, working with UW-Oshkosh, the Fox Cities Convention and Visitors Bureau and local businesses to make it an extraordinary event. Vanden Acker was the media relations director for the 2003 and 2004 NCAA Division III Women’s Golf Championship when the event was hosted by the Midwest Conference at The Golf Courses of Lawsonia in Green Lake, Wis.
Vanden Acker also has been honored by the College Sports Information Directors of America for feature stories and student-athlete profiles in the organization's Fred Stabley Writing Contest.
The chairperson of Lawrence’s Intercollegiate Athletic Hall of Fame Committee, Vanden Acker came to Lawrence from the Oshkosh Northwestern in 1999. A native of Menasha, Wis., Vanden Acker is an award-winning sportswriter who began working at the Northwestern in November 1992. Vanden Acker covered professional, high school and college sports from November 1992 to March 1997. The sports pages of the Northwestern were named the state's best on multiple occasions during Vanden Acker's tenure in Oshkosh, and he won Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards for local sports coverage. Vanden Acker then served as the assistant sports editor until coming to Lawrence in December 1999.
A 1989 graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh, Vanden Acker has served on the Department of Journalism Advisory Board at his alma mater and on the Fox Cities Sports Commission. After his graduation from UW-Oshkosh, Vanden Acker was the reporter and sports editor at the Ripon Commonwealth-Press from October 1989 to November 1992. During his time at the Commonwealth-Press, he won Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards for local sports and news coverage, and the newspaper earned the Publisher of the Year award as the best weekly paper in the state. Vanden Acker also worked as a sportswriter at the Appleton Post-Crescent in 1988 and 1989 while completing his studies.
Vanden Acker and his wife, Julie, live in Fox Crossing, Wis., and have a daughter, Anna, who is a student-athlete at Lawrence.
